Black Caviar is perhaps the greatest race horse in Australia’s history but has the racing industry capitalised on one of its greatest assets to increase the number of people watching and betting trackside?

Once a favourite pastime for the nation, why are people staying away from the racecourse?

Transcript

Geraldine Doogue: Saturday Extra likes to track significant changes in Australia’s cultural life and there’s an argument around at the moment that we’re watching one of these shifts right now, centring on the once very popular event of going to the races. Today, for instance, is a significant day in the racing calendar, with the Futurity Stakes at Caulfield, part of Melbourne’s Autumn Racing Carnival.

And there’s a rather large omission from the field by the name of Black Caviar, perhaps one of our greatest ever horses. Most of us may have heard of her, maybe even glimpsed this majestic mare racing, probably on TV. The question is: should it be more than that, given her talent? Has the racing industry capitalised on one of its biggest assets for some time to re-excite Australians in the attraction of not merely betting, but revisiting the track itself, of renewing its social cachet, I suppose.

Well, certainly this is the argument of Patrick Smith. He’s the widely read sporting columnist at The Australian, who joins me now along with racing guru Dean Lester, one of the best tipsters in the industry and commentator for RSN, Radio Sport National. Welcome to the program, gentlemen.

Patrick Smith: Thanks, Geraldine.

Dean Lester: Geraldine.

Geraldine Doogue: Patrick, we’ll have to tease this out, because it can seem slightly contradictory, but if I read you correctly, you see Black Caviar as a sort of litmus test; that it’s such a freak horse that, yes, many of us know about it via the headlines, but it’s not achieving the prominence that it should and that it illustrates perfectly your point that racing hasn’t exploited her power and it’s demonstrated its inability to market a champion to a wider society. Am I right here?

Patrick Smith: Yes, I think that’s in a nutshell. I think that racing has got a once in a generation, maybe once in 50 year, opportunity to do something with its sport, which I believe is in decline. And it hasn’t achieved it even with Black Caviar, this magnificent sprinting mare. I don’t think the story’s really gone outside the racing boundaries. I don’t think it’s become a general talking point. Now, if you can’t do that with Black Caviar, I think that that says everything about what direction your sport is heading.

Geraldine Doogue: What’s your evidence for... because I think people might say, ‘Oh God, everyone knows about Black Caviar.’ You say, but it’s not actually putting bums on seats, as it were.

Patrick Smith: No, it’s not. I mean, they open the gates for a free day at Caulfield and they get 20,000. She’s... highly publicised race in the sporting pages draws 22,000 to Flemington. I just think that the crowds—they’re not big crowds, 20,000, and as soon as she’s not racing, that crowd shrinks to 4000. Now whether she doesn’t bring the crowds back a second and third time, and once she stops racing, in fact she will have had no impact on the culture of racing and the amount of people who follow it.

Geraldine Doogue: Last year, you say, Black Caviar ran in the Patinack Farm Stakes—this was as part of the big Spring Carnival—and it drew—and it was her sixteenth consecutive win, the last day of the carnival—and it drew a record crowd of 85,000, but it bettered the previous mark by just 1000 people when she hadn’t raced. I thought that was quite an interesting statistic.

Patrick Smith: Well, I think it says everything. Even when racing is at its peak—there’s a fervour about racing with the Melbourne Cup Carnival—even then we can’t build on the crowd that goes through Black Caviar: she only drew another thousand people. People are interested in Black Caviar; they’re not hooked on it, because they’ll poke their head into racing, have a look at it, and withdraw. There was nothing that they saw, apart from Black Caviar, that makes them want to go back.

Dean Lester: Patrick, how do you explain recently during the semi-final of the Australian Open that the broadcaster chose to break into the coverage to show her first up run in only a Group 2 race, a station that doesn’t cover racing from Moonee Valley very often? Surely that suggests that there’s some interest, not necessarily by going to the track, but there’s interest in her in a general sense, because I don’t see many other events breaking into coverages of sporting events like that.

Patrick Smith: No, that’s true, Dean, and I think that that really is a pointer to what she is achieving in racing and that there is a spread of it. But my point is the spread of the interest in Black Caviar remains minimal, and it will be non-existent when she stops racing.

Geraldine Doogue: See, Dean, I wonder if you... in terms of embedding it and getting a broader social group, I suppose, going to racing—that’s what I read from Patrick’s challenge, in a way—this is a golden opportunity to actually change public taste about racing. Now, is that underway, do you think?

Dean Lester: Look, it’s very hard to change with one horse. Because it’s not like a great football team or a great group of players that’ll be around season after season. She could be one run away from her last run because of injury and things like that. And to be fair, publicity for the last 12 months in racing has been on her shoulders. So once she’s gone, as Patrick said, that’s the problem that racing faces.

I think it’s a broader thing that the horse itself isn’t so much embedded in society now. We’re a very urban society, we don’t have the day-to-day use for a horse that generations prior to us did have, and so I think even the people interested in racing have lost touch with the horse, as such. They bet on them, but they may not necessarily want to go and see them in the flesh.

Geraldine Doogue: Well, I must say I’m from Irish Australian stock and I grew up with horses and my father had racehorses and I went to the track a lot. And it was just part of my upbringing. Mind you, I don’t go now very often. Have the demographics changed so profoundly that there’s just a lot more draw on people’s time on a Saturday afternoon, or what?

Dean Lester: I certainly think people are time poorer, and day at the races is quite a long day. And it’s something that the officials have tried to look at, to try and embrace a shorter product akin to the Twenty20 cricket concept. But if we’re going to have a national clock of racing, everyone needs their little moment and so the tightest you can get a Saturday afternoon is a race on that track every 35 minutes. And often it’s 40 minutes. And so there’s a lot of downtime on the racetrack and that doesn’t appeal so much to a modern society.

Geraldine Doogue: I think you also note the increase in the Asian population in Australia, who are great gamblers. Do they go to the track?

Dean Lester: Well, they don’t, and they certainly don’t in Melbourne. And they’re certainly active punters, but they don’t embrace the horses much and it’s just purely gambling. And I think the interest in racing is still high, but the interest on-track is at an all-time low.

Patrick Smith: I think it’s terribly difficult to... I think it’s an inaccessible product. If you take a person to the races, as Dean said, you get a one race every 40 minutes. But if you take somebody there for the first time and they watch a race, they’ll see a horse whipped the length of the straight; not one horse, but all the horses that are in contention will be whipped. Now, if Black Caviar was not such a wonderful horse and had to be whipped to get to the line, people would look at that and say, ‘Good God, I’m not sure that I’m happy with that.’

If you go to a jumps race and a horse and a jockey will fall and the jockey will be badly injured and the horse may be put down in front of your eyes. This is very difficult for people fresh to it to understand.

Geraldine Doogue: Dean?

Dean Lester: I think that in any form of activity, in any form of livestock, you’ll have dead stock and you don’t want... whether it be jumps racing or flat racing or equestrian endeavours of any sort there can be injury and destruction. And it’s not a pleasant thing, but I think that people aren’t aware as generations gone by that dealt with the animal on a hands-on level.

Geraldine Doogue: But, gee, it used to be a lot of fun, too.

Patrick Smith: Geraldine, that’s a very valid point that Dean makes about the exposure to the horse. But that doesn’t explain why racing hasn’t done anything to recapture that. That’s another part of this angle, of this story, is that racing has just let it happen. And it’s let it happen because it’s not a national sport; it doesn’t have a national voice; it hasn’t been able to publicise Black Caviar in any national sense, because it’s such a tightly held sport within its states.

Geraldine Doogue: Dean, a final word to you: is racing—it’s a very interesting point about the very state-based, very strong communities, of course, which I would have thought was one of its huge assets—but in terms of comparing and contrasting itself with other codes and groups that are involved in public taste, is it trying to learn?

Dean Lester: Oh, look, I think Patrick’s been a crusader about the whip rules and I think they’ve been modified to a great extent and I’m sure there’s probably people out there that want further development to the extent of the whips being banned. But I certainly think racing has regulated itself a lot: maybe not to the outsiders as much as you’d think, but to people within the industry, with three letters called O, H and S, we’ve been changed around so much in the industry and the standards have been lifted. And maybe they don’t meet modern society’s standards, but, gee, they’ve come a long way in the last five years.

Geraldine Doogue: All right, gentlemen, look, I’ll let the listeners let us know, but I thank you very much for your time today as we join in this debate. Dean Lester, thank you to you.

Dean Lester: Pleasure. Thanks, Geraldine.

Geraldine Doogue: And Patrick Smith, thanks to you.

Patrick Smith: Thanks, Geraldine.

Geraldine Doogue: And Patrick, of course, writes for The Australian newspaper and Dean Lester is a tipster—should have asked him for some tips—from Radio Sport National for the weekend. And I’ll be very keen to know whether you still go off to the track, or how you bet, or whether you do or you don’t anymore, or whether it’s all sort of passed you by—you’re taking the children to sport or something else.

Guests

Patrick Smith

Sports columnist for The Australian

Dean Lester

Racing commentator with RSN (Radio Sport National)

Credits

Presenter

Geraldine Doogue

Producer

Kate MacDonald

Comments (4)

Paul Smith :

25 Feb 2012 8:50:25am

Geraldine, You are known for choosing topics for discussion because they matter to us as a people. So I am completely mystified about why you chose to talk about the racing industry and its decline as though it matters. Whipping horses is not the only reason the whole industry is a shame. Its role in promoting gambling is another reason decent people should treat it with contempt. But most of all, the fact that it is so utterly corrupt, not only in the stables but in the board rooms of racing clubs, should be a compelling reason not to give it the vernier of respectability your discussion gave it. The discussion is a blot on an otherwise constructive repertoire of topics.

Ken :

25 Feb 2012 8:58:11am

Hi Geraldine, I thought,when I heard the beginning of your piece on racing, that the article was a tongue in cheek comment on a bygone 'sport' something akin to bear-baiting or bull-fighting. I was dismayed to realise that you were genuinely advocating attendance of an event that consists of animal cruelty in the pursuit of ill-gotten gain, perpetrated by the kind of lowlife that comprise the gambling 'industry'. Shame !

James Groombridge :

Peter :

25 Feb 2012 12:18:02pm

The problem with racing it has been reduced to another gambling product and is about as interesting as watching a roulette wheel spinning. 30 or 40 years ago you could walk down any suburban street on Saturday afternoon and the air would be filled with the sound of transistor radios broadcasting the races. The commentors were interesting raconteurs whose pre and post race comments would keep you entertained and engaged. Sadly now race broadcasts are an endless procession of races which is simply delivering the results like the lotto draw. The average person (usually male) does not follow the races anymore.The racetrack was an interesting place, the social elite, bookies and colourful racing characters through to the “stoopers” going through discarded tote tickets made the track a vibrant, entertaining outing until you left depressed and broke or savouring a rare minor victory over your mortal enemy the bookie.Sadly I think you are being nostalgic about a bygone era, which will never return in this corporatized, commoditized world.The only way to return people to the track on a regular basis would be to ban off course betting. Over 30 years on my infrequent trips to the track, one person was always there, he was an “amateur” professional punter and now he bets in Vanuatu on the internet from the comfort of his lounge watching races on pay TV.